I have a new problem with my Mavic 2 Pro/Smart Controller which is about a year old.

The video feed to the screen on the controller is distorted and colours are washed out, and about every 1 second or so there is a white flash on the feed - the screen goes completely white for a fraction of a second. The button control commands to take photos do not appear to work (it seems to register the command but there are no photos stored on the SD card) and sometimes the video feed freezes completely on the last view. Flight controls normally work fine although on one test flight I could not yaw the drone but height and direction were fine. This first happened at a remote rural location so it is definitely not an interference problem on the link as the nearest radio transmitter of any sort was about 5 miles away.

So far I have read various threads none of which describe the exact problem I am seeing, I have done a factory reset on the controller (no different except I then had the joy of trying to connect it to a new wifi network which was very difficult as it could not see the wifi for some reason). I have updated everything and of course switched it all off and on again a few times with no difference. I cannot see any way of doing a factory reset on the drone itself.



I've taken out both the SD cards as I read there can be problems with those, but no difference and have unpaired and re-paired the drone and controller.


It was fine until yesterday, I did do an update on 31 Dec but have used it since on 2 January with no problems. I do not know if the problem is with the drone or the smart controller and though I've updated everything again (there was a DJI Go update available) I cannot resolve the problem but I don't even really know what the problem is. I understand the aircraft link is different to the video link so my best guess is there is some issue with the link that the video runs over but I have no idea what to do about it and whether any diagnostics are possible?

Thanks in advance for any help.

This sounds like a hardware problem in the SC to me. Usually when the video link is too weak, the screen shows the last received video frame but turning grey. So no flashes or so. Also the temporary loss of only particular function buttons is absolutely unusual.

Imho, with Ocusync v2 the aircraft operating commands are embedded in the video signal and don't use a detached channel. But I might be wrong.

FloridaNext Posted at 1-7 02:23
This sounds like a hardware problem in the SC to me. Usually when the video link is too weak, the screen shows the last received video frame but turning grey. So no flashes or so. Also the temporary loss of only particular function buttons is absolutely unusual.

Imho, with Ocusync v2 the aircraft operating commands are embedded in the video signal and don't use a detached channel. But I might be wrong.

Thanks. What should the signal strength be when the drone is close to the controller? Somewhere in the SC video settings I found a signal strength graph for the video feed and it seemed low to me - right down at the bottom of the graph.

I guess if it's hardware then it is probably knackered and I would just need a new one? It's not very old so very disappointing considering the price of it but there is no practical way of sending it anywhere that it can be repaired.

If you mean the transmission bar below the signal strength graph, it shows about 12 Mbit/s when the drone is close to the RC.
Guess you've bought the combo drone + smart controller so you don't own the regular controller to test the drone, right?

FloridaNext Posted at 1-7 07:10
If you mean the transmission bar below the signal strength graph, it shows about 12 Mbit/s when the drone is close to the RC.
Guess you've bought the combo drone + smart controller so you don't own the regular controller to test the drone, right?

I am away on holiday at the moment but I do actually have a standard controller, I just can't get it at the moment and had been hoping to sort out the problem before the holiday ended.

I think the issue is with the drone not the controller as if the video drops out completely - usually after you try and take a photo - powering the controller off and on makes no difference but powering the drone off and on seems to revert back to the 'slightly broken' state where there is a video feed to the screen, just a poor quality one.

I have tried to reload the drone firmware with DJI Assistant but it keeps failing - both current and older versions. Other than sending it away for repair I don't know if there is anything else I can try? I can't get it repaired in this country so it means being without it for a month or more.

Have now managed to test with another controller which gives the same symptoms -  poor grainy video and flashing then it cuts out when you try and take a photo and nothing responds properly with DJI GO but flight controls are fine.

I guess that means the drone is knackered and I need to find some way to send it halfway around the world to be fixed. The DJI Assistant 2 won't update the firmware, just keeps downloading it and then failing, is there any other way to do a 'hard reset' on the drone and restore to factory settings? I'm a bit despondent with DJI reliability at the moment as I only got it in January last year and it's a lot of money to spend for something that just fails for no reason - I've never even crashed it yet!